


Runners

by Jameson9101322



Category: Tron (1982), Tron Run/R
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, spoilers for tron 1982
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:18:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameson9101322/pseuds/Jameson9101322
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crom wasn't written to be a runner, but yet here he was, sprinting madly through an occupied city on missions for a liberation force. Would his User approve of this development? Would Tron and his new friends be proud? What could happen if Clu's forces find them hiding in the wasteland? These were questions he couldn't answer yet, but there wasn't time to worry. Running was his new function, no matter what the cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runners

Crom the compound interest program stumbled, winded, onto the communications portal at the end of a long sprint. Behind him, system police glowing Clu orange scattered bits of platform and road in their pursuit. An overhead voice warned of viral activity – that was him – and unauthorized program access. The whole sector was looking for him, and he was already starting to fragment from a couple close calls. What was he even doing here? What would Mr. Henderson say? He wrote him to fetch and file, not infiltrate core systems. Now Crom was throwing disks, data mining, and running out for way more than just T-Bills.

Another siren blared – no time to dawdle. A veritable flock of recognizers descended from above. Crom held his disk skyward, downloading his construct into the code and vanishing up a light bridge before their bombs disintegrated the platform beneath his feet. 

Crom's body reconstituted on a similar platform on the edge of the Outlands. Tron and the other runners stood on a craggy outcropping, watching the part of the city Crom just ran through phase out of existence. Yori turned on her heel with a wide smile. “He made it!”

“Hey, butterball!” Flynn swooped in to noogie the top of Crom's head. “You got us nervous for a second. Good hustle out there!”

“H-hustle?”

“Not bad for a first time,” Ram agreed. “I only destroyed HALF a city block on my first go.”

“I... I don't know. I really don't think I'm cut out for this job – ”

“None of that negative self talk.” Flynn wagged a finger at him. “I fished you out of the grid code for a reason, you know.”

“Yeah, you felt bad because I lost.” 

“Were you followed?” Tron asked, firm and direct as ever. “Did you get the data?”

“I don't know how I could have been, the portal felt to pieces the nano I left.” Crom held out his disk. “Here.”

Tron removed his own data disk and held the two together. A white glow raced around the edges, syncing the two for a brief and colorful information exchange. It buzzed a bit in the back of Crom's head, but finished cleanly. When Tron handed him his disk back, Crom found it somehow weightier than it was before, as if the touch of the Savior of the System made his humble code that much more important. 

The program responsible for giving him that disk, Sark, stood a few paces off. The red-lighted executable was there under duress. Crom had no idea how he survived the destruction of the MPC – mostly because he, himself, was de-rezzed at the time – but there was no place for loyalists in this new Clu-centric society and the fact frustrated Sark in a palpable way. The director turned this ire into a long hiss as he spoke. “What is the point of compiling a map when our runners –” Sark met Crom's eye with a brief, angry flash “– are destroying the city it belongs to?”

“This is important work, Sark,” Yori said. “The city blueprint holds more than roads and buildings and you know it. We are risking our lives for this information, if you're too much of a coward to help – ”

“Coward!?”

“Stop.” Tron took her shoulder with a withering look at Sark. “We should change locations. Yori, plug in new coordinates.”

Yori paused to seethe, and exhaled a frustrated “Yes sir.” She took deliberate steps to the platform and touched a panel to raise the input console. Flynn and Ram left her to it. Crom stood gnawing his lower lip and rotating his data disk inch by inch in both hands. It's weight gave him confidence; he was a grid warrior after all. He won some games – or at least completed the training successfully. And he just sprinted two-thousand meters for crying out loud, the constructs on his banking team couldn't do something like that. 

Crom side-stepped to Yori's terminal and cleared his throat. “It's... okay that part of the city blew up right? Tron's not mad or anything?”

“He's not mad, Crom.”

“But we're moving. It's not because I messed up, is it?”

Her demeanor softened. “It's just a precaution. We'd be moving regardless.”

“Okay, if you say so.” 

He spun the disk between two fingers, but lost grip and smacked it flat to his chest with a clank. Yori raised an eyebrow and kept working. 

“So,” Crom ventured. “Where are we going?”

She sighed with a pitying look. Crom's spirits crumbled; he knew that expression – he was being annoying again. Yori took his shoulder in one hand and his disk from him with the other. “Don't let the other get to you. I know it looks dire, but deep down they're still video warriors playing a game, even Sark. Your friends rib you because they like you.”

“They do?”

“Promise me you won't be discouraged. Can you do that?”

“Sure. I mean... I'll try I guess.”

“That's the spirit.” She snapped his disk back to its holster. “Go tell Tron we're ready to go.”

“Okay.”

Crom held his head a little higher as he approached the circle of Tron, Flynn, and Ram; Savior, User, and Rebel. Ram was also killed in the fall of the MPC, although Crom didn't know how. He felt it was a private thing to ask someone; how'd you get de-rezzed? Flynn reconstructed Ram first – it was how he found out he could do it at all – and Crom later when they happened upon the ruins of the old game grid. It seemed sometimes Users could do anything, and other times they were totally clueless. Either way a lot had changed since Flynn was last in the grid and Crom could see he was uncertain even if he constantly wrote over it with jokes and rapport. 

“It is pretty, you can't say it's not pretty.” Flynn gestured to the lighted cityscape below them. “I do good work.”

Tron crossed his arms. “You're sure you want to take credit for this?”

“Sure, I built it, didn't I?”

“Flynn...” Tron shook his head. “Things have changed a lot more than I suspect you are aware. Clu is your creation.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Do you remember making him?”

“Yeah I was writing tank programs.”

Tron's frown deepened. “This... isn't that Clu.”

“Yeah it's a copy or something.”

“So you are aware we can make copies.”

“WE can make copies.” Flynn pointed to himself. “Users can. I make copies all the time. I make copies of you! I bet Alan has about fifty copies of you laying around, gathering dust, usin' them for coasters. Making copies is, like, two keyboard clicks and a destination folder.”

“It's a bit more complicated than that around here.” Tron shifted weight. “This isn't the system we used to know. It's got remnants of it, but those are old and out-dated.”

“What, you mean like me?” Ram asked with a snort.

“Yes.” Tron's voice was serious but his face stretched in a smile. “But you're a classic.”

Ram laughed. “Vintage?”

“Hard-coded.”

“I'm still a faster runner than you are.”

“I highly doubt it.”

“Ahem.” Crom threaded his fingers, newfound confidence lost. “Yori says we're ready.”

“Good. Let's go.” Tron split the group on his way to the platform. Flynn shrugged and followed. Ram shoved Crom's shoulder as he passed – perhaps Yori was right about them. Crom's pale blue circuits warmed to white at the thought. 

A similar warming grew along the edge of the city as white points grew to a yellow line and into an orange bubble that swelled toward them through the wasteland. Crom glanced to Sark. He saw it, too, and when the portal started up behind them, Sark actually ran to it. “Out of my way!” 

“Hey!” Ram was shoved back from the light and Sark vanished with a flash.

Flynn snorted. “What's with him?”

There was no denying the lighted swell was an army; thousands strong and glowing the color of the enemy. Fear lit Crom's circuits from head to toe. “Guys?”

Yori activated her console. “Go next, Tron. Keep him out of trouble.”

“Hey guys?”

The group watched Tron ascend and hold his disk toward the light beam. Yori reset the console with a light slider and hit the center button with a tap. 

Crom dashed to the platform. “Yori, wait!”

The portal activated and Tron vanished to wherever he was going. Yori finally looked up from the controls. “What is it, Crom? Is something wrong?”

“Look!”

Clu's army soared toward them, riding cycles and recognizers, covering ground at a panic inducing speed. Yori pounded her fist on the controls. “Flynn, go through the portal! Now!”

“No way!”

“You're a User! You can't let them get you!”

“No time.” Ram grabbed Flynn under the ribs and heaved him onto the platform. Flynn's disk spun on his back and the digitalization specialist beamed him off before he could protest. 

Yori nodded to Crom. “You next.”

“But... I think it should be YOU next.”

“I need to run the console.”

“Yeah, that's what I mean.”

“He's right, they need you on the other side. We can handle a button.” Ram grabbed her hand. “Get on there.”

Crom took the control panel. The lights and bars were unmarked, but the reset slider was easy to find. It followed the touch of his fingertip and prepared the portal to transfer. 

Yori regained her balance at the center. “Destroy the console when you leave! It's the red one!”

“Yes, ma'am!”

A bomb exploded at the edge of their outcropping. The three jumped, heads covered, as bits of broken data rained down. Ram shouted through the chaos. “Punch it!”

Crom activated the portal with his fist. Yori watched his face as her construct uploaded and made a successful escape. He exhaled, reset the slider, and shot Ram a ready look.

Ram unclipped his disk. “You're okay to go last?”

“I don't think I have much choice.”

The first recognizer cleared the cliff-side and another bomb hit the rock wall, de-rezzing a spread of land to their right. There was no way they both would make it, the enemy was already on them. Crom felt no reservations. Ram was more important – he was a faster runner and a better fighter – if they pulled the trigger now, he'd make it back to Tron and Crom could blow the portal before the enemy followed through. 

It wasn't like they'd miss him, and he'd already died once, after all. De-rezzing wasn't so bad. Sure it was painful, but the fear of the unknown was the more unpleasant portion and a second death wouldn't have that. He wouldn't even have to scream. Ram glanced from the recognizers to the portal and leaped to the platform. He dashed straight through the upload beam and hit the ground to the console's right. Crom gaped an instant, stunned but aware enough to be upset. “What are you – ”

“Running! What else?” Ram jabbed the self-destruct button and grabbed Crom across the chest. The two sprinted toward the battered cliff where bluff gave way to rubble, providing access to a narrow pass and the Outland hidden beyond. 

Soldiers vaulted the crag behind them, bikes skidding into a slide. One turned to follow them downward when the portal finally blew. The explosion blasted upward in a column of light and heat, ships and bodies disintegrated, and the ground shook with a shock wave that rumbled through the whole formation. 

The ground lurched and Crom stumbled, falling a few paces behind a racing Ram. The pass behind them collapsed and soon the ground below them fell away. 

“Jump!”

Ram leaped off the crumbling landscape, his foothold following him into the void. Crom could only pray and run off the edge of safety into darkness. Their flight suits opened simultaneously, and they glided through the night as lightning flashed, illuminating jagged rocks like pikes jutting from the chaotic landcape far below. Crom followed the glow of Ram's circuit pattern and steered with him to the ground. The two huddled behind an angled spire as electricity flashed overhead.

Vaporized bits still billowed on the other side of the ridge, but no orange circuit lights followed through their exit. The soldiers who saw them leave must have died in the explosion. Crom dropped his head against their shelter, relieved and disbelieving. Ram thumped him across the back. “How about that? Good hustle, huh?”

Crom managed a winded laugh. “Good hustle.”

“Any idea where the others went?”

“No.” 

“Then I guess we should start looking.” 

Ram shoved himself up, but Crom stayed on the ground. Two sprints and now a third one? And no clear destination, either. He was starting to miss the game grid. Living in a cell was better than lightning strikes or dying of exhaustion. Any more danger and his nerves would fry like the bodies he'd witnessed back at the portal. 

Ram pressed his lips and shuffled anxiously. “Do you have a light cycle?”

“What?” Crom looked up. “Uh, yeah. I got an old one back in training.”

“Good, that's good.” Ram searched Crom's face and offered his hand. “Don't worry, fellow runner, I'll get us back to Tron.”

Crom's brow knit. “It could take a while.”

“The grid's not infinite.”

“Clu's guys will be all over.”

“Then it's just another mission.” He nudged his hand closer. “We run until we find him. What do you say? We can make it if we work together.” 

Crom followed the circuit lines from Ram's face to his extended arm. Guidance from Mr. Henderson would be handy about now. Crom wasn't designed to live as a fugitive, but that excuse was wearing thin. He was a runner, and instead of a database manager asking him to fetch archived data, he had Tron's liberation and a friend standing before him with an open hand. 

“Yeah, all right.” Crom let the grid warrior pull him up from the ground. “User knows what I can offer, but I'll do the best I can.”

Ram brightened. “Your best will work out perfect.”

“If you need some filing let me know.”

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt to explain where the dlc went -_-  
> May update as more bundles get released.


End file.
